Wrapping BTC

In this episode of Bullish on Bitcoin Show, Alexei sits down with Nadia Song from BiT Global (WBTC) — the asset that first brought Bitcoin to DeFi back in 2019 and has remained the dominant Bitcoin wrapper ever since, underpinning Aave, Morpho, MakerDAO, Uniswap, and hundreds of other protocols.

From the inside story of how WBTC went from a few hundred BTC to 20,000 in one DeFi Summer, to the honest answer on why institutional custody won the trust debate, to a candid breakdown of the Bitcoin wrapper landscape (WBTC vs cbBTC vs LBTC vs TBTC) — this is the definitive episode on the asset that made Bitcoin useful in DeFi, and where it goes from here.

In this episode we discuss:

• Nadia's origin story: how she landed at WBTC and why she really tried hard to get the role
• The 2019 origin of WBTC: why Bitcoin needed to be wrapped, why Ethereum was the destination, and how DeFi Summer lit the fuse
• Why MakerDAO listing WBTC as collateral was the catalyst that sent supply from hundreds to 20,000+ BTC overnight
• The custody debate: why institutions prefer regulated, transparent custodians — and why WBTC's proof-of-reserves approach addresses that
• Why Bitcoin maxis' self-custody argument and WBTC are solving different problems — and both are right
• WBTC vs cbBTC: neutrality as a moat vs CEX-backed convenience — and who wins in each market segment
• The real Bitcoin wrapper landscape: WBTC, cbBTC, LBTC, TBTC, SolBTC — and how to filter out "paper Bitcoin" that isn't DeFi-native
• The dirty secret of new Bitcoin wrappers: they all need WBTC liquidity to bootstrap DEX pairs for collateral use cases
• Why growing the pie matters more than fighting over market share — and the untapped opportunity of Asian Bitcoin holders
• Native WBTC vs WBTC.OFT via LayerZero: how the lock-and-mint architecture works across 21+ chains
• BOB Gateway as the frictionless on-ramp: native Bitcoin → WBTC on Ethereum or 9 other chains in one transaction
• Regulation and DeFi: which players feel the pressure first, and how WBTC's compliance team monitors and adapts
• The future of Bitcoin bridging: could BitVM eventually power a more trust-minimised WBTC?
• AI agents and DeFi: why agentic trading will grow the pie — but human oversight remains essential for no